Mid thirties, 3 kids, recently moved away from VHCOL city where we owned a $1.3M 2BR condo, and left our $500k TC jobs. We now live in a MCOL city with one salary only. NW is $2.6M, and since we sold our home we have no mortgage, no debts, cars paid off, kids are in public schools that are okay but only for elementary school so we won’t stay too long. The reason we are here is because we have nearby family for childcare, which is really helpful while kids are so young (oldest in elementary, others are preschool)

We are renters now though since we just moved and are hoping to move back in a few years when the kids are older to a VHCOL city where we could have the same earning ability. We also want to buy and own a SFH, which was around $3M where we used to live. They had excellent schools which is key for our 3 kids.

How could we make it work? How much should be put down to afford a home in a VHCOL place again? It would come with great job opportunities for both our fields if we relocate back, but we were burning out and needed the family help and desperately needed to get out of the 2BR condo with many neighbor disputes on the HOA. We now are able to rent a 4BR for our family.

Any advice? We would need to figure out our next move in 2-3 years and want to properly position ourselves by then.

Hi everyone,

My wife and I (both 30) are looking to simplify our lives as we prepare for the arrival of our first child. We currently have a $250k household income, $1.1m in investments, and own three properties and four cars.

Here’s where we’re at:

Real Estate: • Two investment properties, fully paid off.

•	Primary residence: A historic mid-century house on 3 acres, worth $850k, with $200k left on the mortgage.

Utilities and maintenance are costly: $600+ for electricity, $200–300 for water, plus land upkeep.

Cars: • Two Porsche Cayennes (one unreliable and needs to go).

•	A Porsche Cayman sports car.

•	A 1992 Range Rover Classic I restored myself.

We moved from the city to a smaller town outside it, drawn by the house, but we regret the move. The area lacks good food, entertainment, and community, which makes us miss urban life. We do love the house itself but wish we could move it elsewhere.

We’re considering relocating to Charleston, a city we visit often and love. It’s urban, has a community we enjoy, and aligns with our long-term lifestyle goals. Ideally, we’d like to find a home there with no mortgage or as small a mortgage as possible. I’d also want space for a workshop/garage for my cars.

Overall, we feel like we just have too much—too many responsibilities and expenses—and need to downsize to focus on what really matters as our family grows.

Any advice or insights on how to approach this transition, especially balancing finances, real estate, and lifestyle, would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

Would love to hear stories of HENRYs who have moved up in their current firm and built on that.

A number of stories I hear are people starting their own businesses, job hopping, etc. Any HENRYs been very successful at the same firm getting promoted?

What was the timeline and general pay bumps? I find myself at an incredible firm with great reputation (only been there a year with a relatively high salary and bonus TC 250k) and want to hit the next level.

I struggle with the narratives of moving up within current firm vs job hopping around. Anyway, would love to hear stories of the former if you have thank you!

I'm a 28M, current income including my job salary and dividends is about $250k annual, net worth about $1.5 million, dont own any property other than just my car, currently renting. I was poor throughout my childhood, my parents and I came here as immigrants, dad worked as a janitor until his retirement and mom as a hotel cleaner. We would barely get by, so when I became 18 I made sure to change that, anyways fast forward and I have a great job now working in cybersecurity and I also make a a great amount of income from dividends.

I noticied almost immediately jealousy entered my social circle, when I bought an expensive car, some of my friends would try to talk down about the car, when I bought expensive watches or clothes, they would try to say why do I always have to "show off". It got to the point I just stopped hanging out with some of them, I dont need that negative energy.

I've noticed the same thing here on reddit, when someone with a high income posts on a sub they'll get downvoted to hell and have a bunch of negative comments.

In my opinion it perplexes me, when I was poor I would want to learn from wealthier individuals not hate on them. Has anyone else noticed this being an issue as their wealth has increased whether related to in real life or on social media?

I

There's no one else to say this to (other than my wife), so here I am.

My wife (34F) and I (33M) hit $2M net worth today! I tally up all our assets and liabilities on the first of every month and saw it crossed over the line today. We wanted to celebrate by buying some tickets to Japan but its so expensive right now, we're settling (for now) for a fancy dinner somewhere. Still figuring out where.

Stats:

• We hit $1M about 1.5 years ago, in June 2022.
• Total Assets is about $2.7M. $1.2M of that is in real estate (our primary home and 1 rental property).
• Two mortgages are the only debt we have.
• We still drive a shitty Corolla (1 car family), but we expect to get a minivan once we add a second kid to our family. We currently have a 16mo daughter.
• Not doing any interesting investments otherwise. Just the usual stuff: 401K and IRA mostly. Both maxed. Doing mega backdoor contributions into the 401K. Will be adding an HSA to the mix starting Jan 1 next year.
• The only complex part of this is focusing on overall portfolio asset allocation mix. For the whole household, we're at 50% large cap, 20% small cap, 25% international, 5% cash/fixed income. We did a big reallocation this year and i'm happy that we're matching our targets.
• Household income is currently roughly $500k, but changes year from year since a significant portion of that is coming from discretionary stuff (bonuses and RSUs).

In the spirit of capitalism and consumerism, what are some of the things we’re purchasing this season?

For myself, picked up a MacBook Air, a new Technivorm, and some ski gear / athleisure clothing. Also picked up some Lego sets to add to a burgeoning collection, as a somewhat less practical indulgence haha.

In the 1980s, $1 million could purchase approximately 20 median-priced homes costing approx. $50K each. By 2024, the same $1 million buys only 2 median-priced homes costing approx. $500K each due to significant home price inflation.

This suggests that while $1 million was once considered substantial wealth in the 1980s, its purchasing power has dramatically decreased. To maintain a similar level of relative wealth today, an individual might need around $10 million.

So, if you've reached a $1 million net worth milestone, congratulations! Unfortunately, $1 million today is not the same as $1 million in 1980s. To get to that level of wealth, you'll need $10 million.

One needs to reach the "decamillionaire" milestone today... to be a "millionaire" of the past...

I (34M) am at a bit of a crossroads with my career and seeking advice. For context, I’m an employed (W2) subspecialty physician in a large health system. My wife (35F) also works in healthcare but in an ancillary role.

Our liquid NW is ~2.2M and we do not own a home. FIRE goal is 6M. Our current HHI is ~$950k (800k for me, 150k for her). My salary is entirely productivity based so it can fluctuate but realistically I can expect to make a bare minimum of 615k indefinitely, more likely I would stay 715-750k long term. She is more or less maxed out and only gets the typical annual COL raises. We started trying to have kids a few months ago.

My job is not hard and I’m certainly not overworked compared to a lot of physicians and specialties making a similar salary. But my job is very frustrating because the hospital system has no interest in investing in my specialty even though it’s immensely profitable. We are constantly understaffed, we have outdated equipment, outdated software, and they have explicitly said that if there is no financial incentive to fixing those things they aren’t interested in it.

Lately I’ve been considering changing jobs to one that would pay significantly less (500k) but would allow me to work 4 days a week and move us back to a city that we like which is near my family. My main concerns are:

1. While I would objectively work fewer days, my current workload isn’t really the reason for leaving and there’s no guarantee that this new job would be inherently better
2. I have only been making this salary for 2 years and will almost certainly never get another opportunity to make the kind of money I’m making now.
3. If we are fortunate enough to have kids, the combination of decreased take home pay and increased expenses really cuts into retirement savings
4. Eventually my current job will have to update all of our technology and I am reasonably (~75%?) certain that what they get will put us on par with what is considered “typical” in my field. Nothing amazing, but nothing terrible, and 10x better than what we have right now. That could potentially really improve my QOL at my current job while maintaining a nice salary… I just have no timeline for when that will happen.
5. Obviously a lot depends on my wife’s ability to find a job, although I think she would have a lot more flexibility to potentially move into a remote job which she isn’t opposed to doing.

All that to say… I understand that at the end of the day 500k a year is still an amazing salary and if we have kids only working 4 days a week to spend more time with them while they’re young would be really beneficial. But am I jumping the gun to consider making that change so soon after I started making my current salary?

Edit: Sorry, forgot to mention spending! Currently we spend ~120-140k/year depending on how much traveling we do. We expect our expenses to go up with kids and whenever we buy a house which will at least partially be offset by less extravagant travel when they’re young.

Context: We’re fairly run of the mill, live below our means, stuff savings into S&P and NASDAQ and have done well. We’ve avoided financial advisors or over complicating investing given all the guidance we’ve received. 32M/31F couple, so we’ve got lots of time in the market.

However, I was wondering if people here had a POV on when it would start to be unwise to focus solely on index funds like this. Obviously if we had $100MM in assets to invest, we should probably diversify. I’m assuming that is still true at $10MM. But where between $1M - $10M is the (rough) line?

I have a non-traditional background where I spent my 20s in the arts and doing odd jobs, then pivoted to being a SWE at 29. I finally found my footing in something I liked and was good at. I worked at a startup, then Google, steadily increasing my comp and responsibility with an up-and-to-the-right trajectory.

Then something happened during Covid. I’m not sure what—it might have been a promo rejection or just a disconnect from coworkers—but I started to drift and phone it in. I decided to leave Google a few months ago to get my bearings and some breathing room to figure things out. Since then, I’ve been doing some therapy, decompressing (or decomposing… I’m not sure), and I’m gearing up for the job search.

I’m still reeling from all this, like how something I was so good at and felt so at home with suddenly felt like a pointless slog I couldn’t drag myself to do, even while making $350–$500k (depending on stock). It felt so unlike me, and I’m worried I’m never going to fully emerge from it. I’m hoping the change in environment will help but right now the future feels uncertain.

For context I’m ~37 (fuzzed somewhat for anonymity) and married without kids. I’ve been diagnosed with ADHD and depression and have been medically treated for it since my late 20s. It’s still an issue, but it’s manageable.

I’d love to hear your stories about getting through something like this (or advice or anything, really).

Do you know anyone who has willingly dropped out of their high paying career and regretted it? 32M making plenty of money in Finance (IB) in a MCOL city. On average the hours aren't terrible, but I still get with the random 4am nights or 80+ hour weeks. I have 2 kids, so strongly considering taking a Corp finance role that I know I would enjoy, better work/life balance, but will be a pretty steep step back in pay.

Edit: thank you all for the wonderful advice. It's been really helpful!

My spouse and I are a one-income family with two young kids, and we’ve been doing all the cleaning ourselves. Lately, it’s been hard to keep up, so we’re considering hiring a cleaning service again to reclaim some family time.

We recently brought back our old cleaner, who deep-cleaned our two-story, 4bed/4bath 2,700 sqft home in Southern California after not using their services since 2021. They charged us $350 for the deep clean, which seemed fair—it was two people and took about 5 hours. Moving forward, they’ll charge $300 per month for maintenance cleaning (once a month).

For context, before 2022, when we were both working, we paid $200 biweekly for the same home. These cleaners are fantastic—the house smells like a hotel, and they handle tough tasks like cleaning grease from the hoods and reaching high windows/ledges.

Does this pricing sound reasonable? If you’ve hired cleaning services, how much are you paying?

Hi all, HENRY here. I am a late bloomer so making around 900k a year but just started doing so in the past 4 years. In my 40’s. Savings rate about 300k a year. Not sure how people can afford ski condos at all. Maybe I am too conservative but in retirement in 20 years I want to own a mountain condo and spend summers there and also ski if body holds…

Anybody with personal experience?

Thanks in advance

EDIT: any visceral reactions regarding whether or not this is a reasonable investment? If this is your goal in retirement, would you continue to invest in your proven vehicles and buy a condo in 10-15 years or buy now for appreciation.

Curious about lessons you have learnt and how you have accomplished this. Would love to learn.

What is the mental modal which let you accomplish this? Where did you get the motivation.

I am curious about how people are able to jump across bands and the amount of sacrifice necessary. Was the sacrifice worth it?

Curious about less obvious paths

What about 30M?

Because free / downtime is tough at the HENRY stages of our careers — especially while working 60+ hr weeks with young families — I’m curious what y’all’s reading habits are like.

So, how many books did you read this year?

If you care to comment, I’d love to hear what genres you’re reading. Fiction, non-fiction, etc. And also format: audio, ebook, physical book.

To wit, I’ve read 20 books so far this year (goal is 30). A mixture of fiction, world affairs, geopolitics/foreign policy, and memoirs. Heavily tilted towards fiction (80%). Mostly physical books.

Working: 50-70 hrs a week in VHCOL.

View Poll

Not much else to comment, but ran some numbers tonight and found out the wife and I are millionaires at $1.1m+ as 29M and 30F.

Software sales for me and sales ops for her - just living below our means and investing.

Can't share this anywhere else so what the heck. Still got a few more goals and not quite FI yet, but working towards it.

Almost 40yo living in Midwest MCOL. Married with 2 kids. High intensity finance job (M&A IB) and burning out.

Considering collecting next bonus and then taking some time off to recharge and spend time with the kids. It’s likely a little irresponsible to not have the next professional role set up and ready to step into, but really looking for a break and some extended time with my family.

Has anyone done something similar? It so, how’d you think about how to navigate this financially?

Over the past few weeks I’ve realized that we do literally nothing with most of our time, work M-F just waiting for the weekend… and then errands, chores, TV, nothing… back to the grind on Monday.

Wife works 8a-4p, drops the kids off at school before work. I work 6a-2:30p, pick the kids up at 3:30p. I usually swing by the house after work to let our dogs out and drop off my work vehicle, then head to the school. Grab the kids and go home, start dinner usually around 4:30p. Wife gets home, eat around 5:30p. Then cleanup, 6-9pm is pretty much just waiting for bed. Get up at 4:30a and repeat. It feels like so much time is wasted doing nothing, but also feels like there’s no time to do anything once the normal stuff is done.

What’s life outside of work look like for you?

Don’t DM me about “opportunities” or crypto, I will block you.

As someone who grew up lower middle class and is now HE (400k/yr ish), I’m following the advice of the nice and boring ETFs and slowly building my retirement savings.

I can’t help but think that if I had been born in a rich family who knows all the ins and outs of real state, and all kinds of business investing, I would be able to make my money grow much faster (I want to FIRE).

Have you guys started navigating alternative investments? Like real estate, or investing in businesses, etc? Have you researched it? Or sticking to ETFs?

Edit: thank you guys for talking sense into me :) can’t reply individually, but I appreciate all the input.

So, in 2011, pre-kids and without knowing much, I got sold whole life policies for my wife and me in addition to our term policies. We were told it was an “investment vehicle” for retirement. Well, dad forward a dozen years and I got smarter and decided I was done paying $750/month for life insurance between term and whole. Called my financial advisor and began a 1035 exchange process.

Took the $30k+ cash value in each policy and rolled them into a new $250k policy for each of us. I didn’t need the cash and I feel better knowing there is a permanently guaranteed $250k on each of us forever with no more premiums.

I’m now saving approximately $500/month which I can otherwise save, spend, or invest and continue to have that extra piece of mind.

37M, Annual salary $440,000, net worth 1.3M. I justed added it up and realized I've saved $140k this year (roughly 45% after taxes/medical). $35k of this was company 401k contribution. I have a family of 4, want to have great experiences for all of us but have always wanted to save/invest a lot. How does everyone else balance out their budgets?

Each Thursday members can post and respond to questions to help others enter or advance into careers that are HENRY income brackets. This includes salary negotiation, jobs, companies, positions, promotions, etc. All individual threads on this topic will be considered a violation of Rule #6 and will be removed.

Before posting, familiarize yourself with the definition of HENRY and approximate income levels. The goal of this weekly thread is to provide advice for other members to enter income brackets that qualify as High Earning. (Article: "What are HENRYs? High Earners Not Rich Yet")

When posting for advice, be as specific as possible as to what you would like career advice on, we advise using the structure below and also recommend that you demonstrate a willingness to help yourself by searching the sub and reading through the comments to glean insights from others.

When responding with advice, no flexing. This is an opportunity to support others with advice based on your personal experience. It would be helpful to provide brief context on what positions you to offer the advice (Rule #1 - Be good natured, No trolling) and do not provide ads, affiliate links, or other content without permission from the mod team (Rule #3).

Referring members to other, more appropriate subreddits is acceptable, linking to specific pages, posts, etc. that are passthroughs for affiliate links is not.

Lastly, this is a non-inclusive reminder for anyone participating in this thread or on this sub. Lawyers are not your lawyers, Accountants are not your accountants, Doctors are not your doctors, etc. etc. etc.

Asking for advice - suggested post structure:

• Age/Age range (in 5 year intervals, e.g., 30-34, 35-39):
• Location (e.g., Country, State, Approximate cost of living (Guidance here)
• Total Household Income (HHI); # of people in the household; breakdown of the Total HHI (e.g., salary, equity, bonus, investments) (+/- $30,000)
• Expenses
• Net Worth (+/- $50,000)
• Brief professional background
• Goals/Question/What would you like advice on?

Typically job hopping every 2-4 years leads to larger pay bumps (10-20%+).

When did you stop chasing the bigger checks and settle into your job? Do you have any regrets doing so?

For me, finding like-minded, driven people.

39M in bay area. I'm really good at what I do: machine learning engineer who understands business and product having built a reasonably successful business. And I clearly have impact at the company I work at. I make the company $10s of millions in revenue. Yet I feel like the money I make is obscene (which it objectively is) and that I dont deserve it and that I might lose this. But I've asked around at other companies and there are companies that are willing to match my salary at these new companies......I feel like Im somehow morally wrong in getting this high a salary.

I realize I'm likely coming across as a douche but was wondering if anyone else has a similar experience.

On reddit you hear so much doom and gloom and then you find these fire subreddits where everyone seems to be a millionaire by 30.

How do you reason about this? What is your mental model around what causes this?

The top 10-20% of the US society is doing great while others are not. What are everyone's thoughts around this? If this will be sustainable long term or will there be some kind of economic collapse like a lot of people on reddit seem to predict?

Or will we just turn into more of a feudal society like most civilizations have been for most of human history.

And these difference in outcomes? What do you think causes this? Sure a lot of people in the corp world are just pointless bootlickers. But in aggregate do these outcomes point towards some kind of skill/insight gap between people? Are only 10-20% of our species effective and is that why we see difference in outcomes in a naturalistic system like capitalism?

Hoping for answers different from typical doom and gloom since most people here seem to be doing well

What is your total gross household income in USD? Asking for couples only to maintain consistency. Please include estimated annual bonus(es), RSU/stock options (if unrestricted). Please do not include passive investment income (wages only).

Would love to hear in the comments how you got to where you are, your industry, if you live in an HCOL/MCOL/LCOL, how much you work (# hours), risks to your income (I.e. cyclical industry, largely commission based, high pressure work, etc.), education/training, how you invest, how family wealth (or lack thereof) has impacted your finances, what are your challenges (lifestyle creep, student debt, supporting family, killer job)? Just looking to understand who HENRYs at large are.

View Poll

I have a nice chunk of change sitting in a property that I could better utilize if it was liquid. Not interested in selling. HELOC/equity loan rates aren’t attractive and a cash out just gets me a higher rate. Any other realistic options or is this just a waiting game?

Hello,

I've lurked in this reddit a lot and have been pondering this thought constantly for weeks now. I value the advice and opinions on this group and figured I would share my question.

I have owned a digital marketing business for 12 years now that has recently grown at a fast pace, I reached 30k Per Month in client revenue. My goal has always been to work at home, invest in stocks to be ready to retire, and purchase a house to start a family. My girlfriend and I recently just purchased a new home that is plenty big enough to raise a family, this felt like a big goal accomplished.

Now that we have paid the down payment, and still have some stocks left for retirement, I've noticed that I keep wondering what would the purpose be for working harder/getting more clients? My business continues to grow every year but the responsibilities get more difficult and longer hours. I reminisce fondly about the early days of starting my company where I made a quarter of what I'm making but had a ton of free time.

I thought about hiring my first employee or paying a contractor on upwork to help. Most of my clients trust me though with access to their accounts and I don't know about hanging that over.

To clarify my question, what do you recommend doing to find purpose when you already achieved your major goals with your business? I think that 30k Per Month is plenty, I can pay the new mortgage, save for retirement and enjoy my hobbies. It seems like at this level, more money just feels like more responsibilities without the payoff.

Thank you

Each Tuesday members can post and respond to questions on housing and the housing market for individuals in HENRY income brackets. This includes selling, buying, negotiation, loans, lending, relocation, schools, etc.

All individual threads on this topic will be considered a violation of Rule #6 and will be removed.

Before posting, familiarize yourself with the definition of HENRY and approximate income levels. The goal of this weekly thread is to provide advice for other members to enter income brackets that qualify as High Earning. (Article: "What are HENRYs? High Earners Not Rich Yet")

When posting for advice, be as specific as possible as to what you would like advice on, we advise using the structure below and also recommend that you demonstrate a willingness to help yourself by searching the sub and reading through the comments to glean insights from others.

When responding with advice, no flexing. This is an opportunity to support others with advice based on your personal experience. It would be helpful to provide brief context on what positions you to offer the advice (Rule #1 - Be good natured, No trolling) and do not provide ads, referrals, affiliate links, or other content without permission from the mod team (Rule #3).

Referring members to other, more appropriate subreddits is acceptable, linking to specific pages, posts, etc. that are passthroughs for affiliate links is not.

Lastly, this is a non-inclusive reminder for anyone participating in this thread or on this sub. Lawyers are not your lawyers, Accountants are not your accountants, Doctors are not your doctors, etc. etc. etc.

Asking for advice - suggested post structure:

• Age/Age range (in 5 year intervals, e.g., 30-34, 35-39):
• Location (e.g., Country, State, Approximate cost of living (Guidance here)
• Total Household Income (HHI); # of people in the household; breakdown of the Total HHI (e.g., salary, equity, bonus, investments) (+/- $30,000)
• Expenses
• Net Worth (+/- $50,000)
• Brief professional background
• Goals/Question/What would you like advice on?